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Saturday, June 30, 2007

My daughter Lea made this flowerpot at Campology Science Camp this past week. She is a very talented budding artist. I just love how she did the eyes. And, boy, does grass ever grow quickly, especially when watered regularly. Something my husband, who mows the yard, probably already realized.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. – Gandhi

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. – George Orwell

We can do no great things – only small things with great love.– Mother Teresa

There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience. – Archibald McLeish

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves… do not…seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will… gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.– Rainer Maria Rilke

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand, instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. – Henry David Thoreau

Try? There is no try. There is only do or do not do. – Yoda

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt

All of us want to do well. But if we do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough.” – Anna Quindlen

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. – Albert Einstein

Whoever degrades another degrades me/And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.– Walt Whitman

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; knows not the livid loneliness of fear, Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings. – Amelia Earhart Putnam

Today was the last meeting in a six-month needleturn appliqué class called Appliqué Academy that I've been teaching at the Quilters Loft Company in Mooresville.

Six students came to this meeting to show off their marvelous work and get their highly coveted Certificates of Completion. It was fun to see how different - and wonderful! - their quilts looked in their individual fabric and color choices. Most of these students had never done needleturn appliqué before, and by the end of a few classes, they were turning out absolutely beautiful work. We used a pattern in Piece O' Cake's latest book on needleturn appliqué, The New Appliqué Sampler: Learn to Appliqué the Piece O’ Cake Way, which I highly recommend. It has great photos to walk you through every step. A few students had not finished their samplers, but brought in other projects to share. This was a wonderful, friendly group to teach. Thanks, everyone, for making it so fun!

A friend, Meg Kimmel, just gave me these quilt tops. The first is made entirely of silk neckties pieced by hand and then beautifully embroidered on the top. The second is a crazy quilt that looks like it was done early in the 1900s (there are two dates, 1900 and 1901 sewn onto it) and then had additional, more modern, fabrics sewn on top to cover deteriorating fabrics. It is sewn onto a muslin foundation. I love the silk necktie one, but many of its fabrics are deteriorating as well. Meg thinks they were made by her father's grandmother. They were found in an old trunk when handling the estate after her parents died. I am not sure what I am going to do with these, but they sure are neat. Ideas, anyone?